In this post, we’ll talk about reasons why ethnocentrism can be extremely damaging to your vision to multiply, and practical ways to address ethnocentrism.

Do I Have to be the Main Character?

As we mentioned in the first post, many past and even current missionaries can possess an ethnocentric or paternalistic view when they go to the field, perhaps without realizing it. Paternalism is the assumption that missionaries have superior knowledge, experience, and skills than local Christians and exert control over the local church and ministries. This can lead to a variety of issues that keep the ministry from bearing fruit that we’ll explore further in this post.

Part of this paternalistic/ethnocentric view that we as Western missionaries carry is the belief that we should be the “main character” in the ministry. Westerners have a higher cultural value of individualism, which emphasizes their own goals, rights, and decisions. It’s a deeply personal thing to feel called to the mission field, and most missionaries are very aware of the lack of access to the gospel in the fields where they serve. So naturally, we feel and envision that we are the ones responsible for bringing the gospel to these needy people and lands of darkness. We buy into the myth of the “Western savior” that is the hope and light for the unreached.

It’s an awesome privilege to be called to serve among the unreached. We know missionaries sacrifice much to respond to this calling out of many good motivations.

But Jesus is the Savior of the world, not us.

We get to be his ambassadors and get to join with him in the great work of seeing all peoples worship Jesus. God is moving and working in the countries where we are sent, likely through local or near-culture believers in that country or in the region.

We believe the most effective role for the majority of cross-cultural missionaries is to play a Barnabas role – empowering, coaching, and supporting local believers to multiply. In our view, this applies even beyond CPM ministry but to many other types of ministries, whether orphan care, theological education, or justice ministries. Western paternalism in missions has almost always led to negative consequences or at least non-lasting ministries, and we believe it grieves the Lord to see these same mistakes repeated over and over again.

Being the “main character” or having a Western savior perspective is one of the main barriers that keeps missionaries from having their most effective role as a Barnabas, therefore sabotaging their opportunity to be a part of what God is doing.

Baptism Through Binoculars

When we were first learning about movements, we kept hearing about this outsider role of being a Barnabas. It was a difficult mental shift to go from, “I’m going to be the one sharing, leading, and baptizing,” to “I am going to support local believers from the background.”

It’s not that movement practitioners don’t share and disciple – we absolutely do. We must be in the harvest, both out of obedience and to have the credibility to train others.

But we have to understand that our main effectiveness will be in serving and coaching local believers. As we investigated movements, we looked at about 50 case studies of how they started across the world. In nearly all of them, the outsider was partnering with a local or near-culture believer to catalyze multiplication. It was hard to argue with the pattern: if we wanted to see multiplication, this was the role we needed to play.

One story we heard from a movement practitioner really drove home the simultaneous sacrifice and joy of being a Barnabas. This practitioner served in a Muslim context with high persecution. If local Muslims that were interested in learning about Jesus were seen meeting with this white, American, Christian missionary, it would draw the attention of local Muslims and result in significant persecution.

So the outsider practitioner met with a few local, near-culture believers in a more neutral context and cast vision for multiplication, trained them in Biblical principles and practical tools, and encouraged them to go into these local Muslim villages where they would draw much less attention than he did, while coaching them from afar.

As these local believers began sharing and starting groups, he heard the reports and rejoiced but never got to meet the new believers face to face that he had indirectly invested in, prayed for, and loved deeply.

When it came time to baptize many of the new believers in the ocean, his local partner shared with him the time and place but told him, “Please don’t come to the baptism or it will attract unnecessary attention.” Instead, he got a boat about a mile down from the location of the baptism, and through binoculars, wept as he witnessed the celebration of new life among an unreached people group that he would not meet personally until heaven.

Are we willing to make this sacrifice? To take a background role in order that more people would hear and receive the gospel? 

To not be the main character?

How Ethnocentrism Will Sabotage Your Vision To Multiply

We believe that ethnocentrism can directly undermine your vision to multiply. We specifically chose the word “sabotage” because ethnocentrism is often a blind spot for workers, unlike more obvious challenges like team conflict or lack of funding.

These are some ways that ethnocentrism and paternalism can be a major barrier in your ministry:

Judgmental and Bitter Hearts: If our understanding of right and wrong, better and worse is based on our cultural perspective, many things in our host country will feel difficult. Over time, this can result in bitterness and a critical, judgmental spirit. We start to see all the ways that things can’t work in our country, that the people cannot be trusted. Those that don’t address ethnocentrism and bitterness in their hearts will often leave the field early, or start to withdraw into a cloistered missionary community where they do not interact with local people at all. For those that manage to grit it out, they will fail to thrive and eventually run out of motivation to serve.

Lack of Contextualization → Lack of Efficacy: If we believe that our cultural interpretations and expressions of obeying the Word and making disciples are the correct ones, we won’t look for contextualized expressions that might be more effective where we serve. This can apply to every aspect of ministry, from interpreting the Word, sharing the gospel, and ways that we worship. Using non-contextualized tools may attract people who are interested in our culture, but it will be difficult for them to apply tools from our context and multiply with them. We repeatedly see outsider trainers try to use a Western-created, non-contextualized training who are then bewildered when nothing works in a new context because they haven’t consulted a single local believer.

We met with the leaders of a globally well-known ministry in Thailand and asked them about their evangelism method. They told us that they shared using their organization’s tool (developed in the West) over 10,000 times in a year! But at the end of the year, it resulted in 10-15 consistent disciples joining their church. Just 0.1% of those they shared with stuck! We commended their amazing faithfulness and boldness but lamented the lack of willingness to try a more contextualized tool that might be more effective. 

Not Releasing Authority to Local Leaders: Many people understand using contextualized tools for greater effectiveness in ministry, but they still apply their ethnocentric values in evaluating local leaders. Without releasing authority to local leaders, the ministry can never fully indigenize and multiply further.

For example, in the West we might prioritize cultural values of leadership like being well-spoken, direct, and assertive. In Asia, leadership might be expressed by being more reserved, slow to speak, and having the final word. Neither of these cultural lenses are wrong, and they make sense within their own culture.

The problem is when outside missionaries, with a paternalistic approach that exerts control over local churches and ministries, fail to release authority and leadership to local leaders because of their own cultural biases. Emerging leaders may not look the same as leaders in the West, and we assume that we know best and that local leaders cannot yet be trusted. Out of a desire to make sure things are done “correctly,” we miss the opportunity to trust the Holy Spirit, empower local believers to take ownership, and encourage them to apply biblical principles in their own culture.

Overdependence on Outside Leaders and Money: Through a paternalistic perspective, we can assume that Western theology, curriculum, and resources are needed to help the struggling church among the unreached. We inadvertently create dependencies on outside leaders and resources that limit the local church and leaders from indigenizing and multiplying. 

When Helping Hurts is a well-known example of how a good desire of helping the poor by giving financial resources is actually damaging to the local people by creating over-dependency on Western resources. This type of “helping” happens across many types of ministries all over the world.

In consulting with experienced movement coaches, overreliance on outside money is a major barrier in catalyzing the multiplication of churches and disciples. Money brings different motivations and commitments, and we’ve heard of repeated instances of local partners who are driven by a salary and not a calling to make disciples. This can result in misreporting ministry results, an unwillingness to confront bad decisions from outsiders, and sometimes even direct deception in order to receive money.

There can be integrous and truly helpful ways to support disciple-making efforts among the unreached, but outsider practitioners should be very careful, thoughtful, and prayerful about anything involving outside money.

Ethnocentrism on Multicultural Teams: Increasingly, missions teams have team members from multiple different cultures and countries. They will bring in different values, communication styles, and preferences as individuals and from their cultural background.

If team leaders and team members aren’t aware of the cultural differences and have an ethnocentric view, this can lead to major conflicts that distracts you from your vision and can lead to teams fracturing. One resource for this specific situation of multi-cultural teams is Teamwork Cross-Culturally.

Barnabas Role without a Barnabas Heart: Lastly, simply playing the role of a Barnabas to train and coach local believers as an outsider does not necessarily mean that practitioners understand their own ethnocentrism. They may be trainers and coaches, but still inherently mistrust or condescend to local believers. We believe a Barnabas heart is critical to playing an effective Barnabas role. Local believers can easily tell when we are looking down on them or just see them as a means to an end. Lack of true relationship with your local partners leads to a lack of buy-in and ownership in the vision.

How to Address Ethnocentrism

Addressing ethnocentrism doesn’t require perfect understanding of varying cultures. Our job is not to decide what in the culture is right and wrong. But what is necessary is to posture ourselves in ways that directly offset ethnocentric thinking – namely as a learner with a humble heart of love.

Have a Heart of Humility and Love 

The primary way to combat ethnocentrism is modeled for us by Jesus himself! Jesus left the culture of heaven to live among and serve sinful humanity. Here is what Philippians 2 says about his heart posture: 

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,  not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
    even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name…

Philippians 2:3-9

Many times, we experience feelings of offense, fear, or superiority when confronted with other cultures. These reactions are mitigated when we try to embody Christ’s heart of love and humility that considers others higher than ourselves. We are one in Christ and equal in the Kingdom with our brothers and sisters across the world. And the same Holy Spirit that works in us is also working in them! 

When we remember these things and seek to serve out of Christ’s love and humility, it becomes easier to both love the lost and to trust local believers. From there, a Barnabas partnership becomes a natural outflow of our ministry rather than feeling like a sacrifice.

Understanding our Ethnic Boundaries

Learning about our own ethnocentrism can be an overwhelming experience, as our ethnic identity is also closely tied to our personal identity, and it can be difficult to know the difference.

Alvin Sanders describes ethnic borders as “cultural traits that define our ethnic identity for ourselves and others.” He points out that people who come from the majority culture in their home country often haven’t had to think much about these borders because they naturally fit within them.

Most missionaries understand they’ll need to learn a new culture when they arrive in another country. But often that learning stays at the surface level – food, customs, language, and etiquette. What many missionaries haven’t yet wrestled with is how deeply their own cultural values and ethnic borders shape the way they see right and wrong. Without realizing it, they continue interpreting the world through their own cultural framework instead of learning to understand the perspective of their host culture.

There’s grace for us even if we are at the beginning of our journey of learning our own ethnic borders and those of our host country! Our encouragement is to take things one step at a time, with a heart of openness and humility.

One culture is not better or worse than another. Every people group is created ultimately in God’s image. And there are aspects of every culture that are marred by sin. We need the Word and the Holy Spirit to help us in this process of learning to live and serve across cultures.Alvin Sanders’ book, Bridging the Diversity Gap gives an outline of addressing your own heart to align with the Bible, learning about cultural dynamics, and then applying practical changes.

Discovering Cultural Values

One way to learn is from studying cultural values across different countries and cultures, including our own. There are several different frameworks for this, many of which had their origins in Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory. A resource specific for missions leaders would be from Livermore’s Leading with Cultural Intelligence, where Chapter 5 lists out 10 different cultural value dimensions like individualism vs. collectivism, power distance, low and high context. Although it’s a broad estimation, this book also shows how different regions of the world align with different cultural values.

One of the most difficult cultural values to navigate for Westerners can be low and high context, or direct and indirect communication. We had encouraged our teammates in our first term to be willing to learn and be flexible in interacting with local believers, but hadn’t given them much training on direct and indirect communication. I asked one teammate how their weekend was, and they said, “Yeah it was good but crazy. I got invited to one thing after church, and I just kept saying yes, and 12 hours later I was in someone’s home in another province!” As he described what happened, I realized that my teammate did a great job in being flexible and willing to learn, but hadn’t recognized that many of the invitations were simply being polite and indirectly they were not actually inviting him to go! 

Learning about your own and the host culture’s values can be a good, basic introduction to the differences between what you are used to and what the norms are in your host country. It can also be illuminating that people around the world have very different perspectives than our own – a key step in unraveling our ethnocentrism!

Be a Learner

When our team first landed in Thailand, we spent time brainstorming questions that we wanted to ask local Thai people, Thai believers, and Thai pastors. We set goals to ask these questions regularly in our day-to-day conversations and we wrote down our learnings into weekly reports. Through these informal surveys, we were able to generally learn about Thai motivations, values, concerns, and stressors, and even things like types of humor! Almost every answer revealed to us a vastly different perspective from our Western cultural lens. (The more formal version of these would be ethnographic interviews, if you’d like to dive deeper.)

When asking questions, try to stay open-minded with zero assumptions about what someone might say. In the moment of conversation, do your best to downplay any immediate judgment or emotional responses that might stem from your own cultural biases; these responses may actually be indicators to press in and learn more. Strive to listen well and not just wait for your next turn to speak, and continually be curious. Instead of jumping to conclusions, build the habit of asking “why.” And write down what you learn!
Even with a basic understanding of ethnocentrism, we still struggled many times figuring out a different culture and not being judgmental! Many of our ethnocentric values are so deeply ingrained that sometimes we cannot help our reactions and judgments. Something we learned from our pre-field cross-cultural training was the phrase, “It’s not wrong, it’s just different.” That phrase has been invaluable, especially when it feels like we are at a cultural impasse that can never be crossed. God is the one who judges what’s right or wrong. But we can embrace that differences exist and seek to understand them.

We’d also encourage you to be a learner in many different ways. Try to take in content from authors, writers, creators from a different background. Read books, watch movies, take in art made by people from different cultures. Ask your friends if they can bring you to different cultural traditions and festivals like holiday celebrations, weddings, funerals, etc. Go to museums and learn about history, traditions, and art. 

One of the biggest cultural experiences is in food! We learned from an Asian pastor how critical it is to be willing to “eat what is set before you.” He told us, “Most cultures share food around the table. If you can’t enter the table because of unwillingness to try different and sometimes strange foods, you can’t enter into the culture. If you can’t enter into the culture, you can’t enter into relationships.” Try every food offered to you at least once!

Lastly, learn the language. Too many missionaries today are overly focused on quick results and bypass learning language to work through translators. Taking the time to learn the language forces you to humble yourself and greatly improves your understanding of the culture. Learn language!

Being a curious, respectful learner will take you 80% of the way there. It requires the humility to say, “My cultural experience is not the only way and is not always the right way.”

Every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation

Deconstructing our ethnocentrism and learning another culture’s values can feel like an insurmountable challenge. Our desire in these two blog posts is not to make missionaries feel guilty or helpless, but to bring to the surface a potentially crippling obstacle that many are not even aware of.

We can’t change overnight. But if we take small steps in humbling ourselves and trying to be a learner, those things will compound and help you pursue the vision that God has given you in a Christ-like, culturally intelligent way. Local friends will notice your willingness and heart to learn and will give you a lot of grace even when you do make cultural missteps.

I think about the practitioner that witnessed baptisms through binoculars often. It is a sacrifice to be sure. But imagine the joy, when we reach the throne of God with all the nations in Revelation 7, clothed in white robes, when we meet those that we have prayed for, that we have indirectly invested in, that we have wept for. To see the fruition of the small sacrifice we made to lay down our ethnocentrism, to not be the main character in order that many would receive new life. 

That joy will last for eternity.

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.

Revelation 7:9

Most-Read Posts in 2025

1. Be Barnabas – What is a NAV?
   • See other posts from the Be Barnabas series
2. What is the “Apostolic” and Why is it Important?
   • See other posts from the Apostolic series
3. Spiritual Warfare
4. Two Types of Kingdom Fruitfulness
5. Team Conflict

Being Barnabas – the role of an outsider in partnering with cultural insiders towards movement continues to be a key missions principle that we believe can unlock many missionaries’ most effective role in the Great Commission. In particular, finding a National Apostolic Visionary (NAV) to partner with can result in exponential multiplication among the unreached.

In order to find these NAVs, we focused on better understanding around the Apostolic gift, the Five-Fold gifts from Ephesians 4:11, and how to practically discern, partner with, and equip these apostolic leaders.

Understanding the Two Types of Kingdom Fruitfulness – the fruit of the Spirit and the fruit of multiplication can help us pursue the good works God has prepared for us with healthy balance. Of course, we want to see multitudes of people worship Jesus among the unreached. And, we want to see their lives and our own lives changed to look more like Jesus every day. Both are necessary!

Team Conflict and Spiritual Warfare remain as two critical topics that most missionaries face on the field and need equipping around. Without healthy conflict resolution and team interaction, it can be really difficult to concentrate on the ministry God has called you to do. Similarly, when we’re feeling discouraged and overwhelmed by spiritual attack, that can take over from everything else. Coincidentally, spiritual warfare can many times take the form of team conflict. Clearing both of these issues through community and reliance on Jesus can help you and your team focus on what you and your team are there to do!

Our Favorite 2025 Posts

1. Listening Prayer Part 1 and Part 2
2. Men and Women Leading Together
3. The Five Essential Elements of an Apostolic Leader
4. Bonus: The Dare to Multiply Podcast
   • See all the Dare to Multiply Podcast episodes

Listening Prayer is an aspect of interacting with God that permeates our everyday lives. It is a critical component of not only effective ministry, but daily obedience. Our movement coaches helped start the Listening Prayer Movement, where their primary tool when faced with any obstacle or opportunity is to ask God what He wants for them. It has grown into one of the biggest movements in the world off of that one question.

Men and Women Leading Together is something near and dear to our hearts as it’s how we operate in ministry and life. We think that learning how men and women work and lead together can lead to healthier and more impactful leaders, units, and teams. We’re excited to have some future posts around this topic in 2026!

Obviously in finding a NAV, it’s important to understand what the Apostolic gift is first. But the Five Essential Elements of an Apostolic Leader isn’t just another ministry tool or framework to find leaders. These elements are actually a result of a life surrendered to God, set apart for great works that will impact the unreached for eternity! Perhaps other than the Be Barnabas approach itself, these essential elements might be the ‘secret sauce’ in actually seeing movements catalyzed.

Lastly, the Dare to Multiply Podcast has been an exciting and stretching endeavor for Jenn as she both shares and learns from other missions leaders and movement practitioners. We hope this resource will be a blessing to many multipliers!

On to 2026!

In early 2026, we’ll publicly launch the coaching ministry that we’ve been working on for the past couple of years. We’re excited to provide opportunities for missions leaders to not only learn from our blog but to get hands on coaching and cohort-based training on topics around partnering with national believers, forming and developing teams, deepening your abiding, and other topics essential for leaders.

Our prayer for ourselves and for all of you is that 2026 would be marked by a deeper abiding and a richer fruitfulness than we’ve ever experienced before, resulting in worshippers from every tribe, tongue, and nations to the glory of God.

Happy New Year! Lastly, a poem that encouraged us this year that we hope will bless you.

Furnace by Gerard Kelly

May God in whose furnace faith is forged
In whose being beauty breathes
From whose dawning darkness flees
Shine on you

May the Father whose love for you
Beats with a rhythm time itself can’t stop
Whose presence in your exile
Is the promise of home
Whose certainties are deeper
Than the cellars of your city
Whose breath is life
Breathe on you

May the son whose story
Is a mirror of your own
Who has journeyed into darkness
To find a key to your prison
Who has dived the deepest oceans
To find pearls for your wisdom
Who has looked into your heart
And found a beauty worth the battle
Who has written your name
On a white stone carved in secret
Hold you

May the Spirit
Who has waited millennia to fill you
Who shaped the word that moved the wind
Of the morning that conceived you
Who holds the earth on which you stand
As a midwife holds a newborn
Who fully knows you
Wholly own you

So may God
The faithful Father
God the scarred Son
God the sculpting Spirit
Journey with you

Feel free to also directly subscribe to the Dare to Multiply Podcast on whatever application you use for podcast listening!

In this episode, Jenn is introduced as a co-host for Dare to Multiply and gives practical advice around leading teams toward a multiplication vision.

‘Be Barnabas’ is what we call the role of the outsider in finding, equipping, and empowering a national apostolic visionary who is a cultural insider to catalyze movements.

We’ve written a number of posts about this Be Barnabas concept to help people understand the biblical background, learn how to get started, and some posts that go into further depth about finding apostolic partners.

Vision + Biblical Background
I. Intro + Mint’s Story
II. Why Be Barnabas?
III. Who was Barnabas from the Bible?
IV. What is a NAV?

How to Get Started
V. How to Find a NAV
VI. How to Partner with a NAV
VII. Life Together

Spiritual Gifts + Missions
VIII. Spiritual Gifts and Missions
IX. Spiritual Gifts and the Missions Field
X. Spiritual Gifts and Missions Teams

Partnering with Apostolic Leaders
XI. What is the “Apostolic” and Why is it Important?
XII. The 5 Essential Elements of an Apostolic Leaders
XIII. Indicators of an Emerging Apostolic Leader
XIV. Partnering with and Developing an Apostolic Leader

If Being Barnabas to find a national partner to pursue movements with is something you desire to do, we facilitate ‘Be Barnabas’ cohorts for people to learn and collaborate with other practitioners from similar contexts and stages of ministry. Learn more and contact us at yieldleadership.org.

In our previous post, we covered a simple definition of spiritual gifts and some key points about gifts. In this post, we’ll explore why using spiritual gifts is critical on the missions field.

As we’ve mentioned in our spiritual warfare posts, our encounters with spiritual warfare during our first short-term trip to Thailand opened our eyes to spiritual realities. It also made us begin to seek out the Holy Spirit and learn about spiritual gifts. As we discerned our calling to go and sought out development and preparation before launching, this category of the Holy Spirit (listening prayer, spiritual gifts, spiritual warfare) was a blind spot for us. As we heard stories from movement practitioners on the field, they shared about healings, demons being cast out, Muslims having dreams of Jesus, and supernatural usage of spiritual gifts. We studied Acts and saw miraculous signs and wonders accompanying the proclamation of the gospel.

It made us ask the question – how come these supernatural acts seem so prevalent on the mission field but feel so rare in our home context? And, if these things are happening and are critical to the work, what can we do to learn about the gifts and access them?

Part of the answer has to do with our own cultural and theological perspectives about the spiritual world, what Paul Hiebert calls The Excluded Middle. Another reason is that we simply are more self-reliant on our ‘natural’ skills and giftings rather than the Spirit’s power when we are in our own comfortable culture. Laboring cross-culturally can humble you quickly and turn you towards looking for power beyond yourself.

The truth is that we need the Spirit’s power for supernatural impact just as much at home as we do on the mission field – it just isn’t as apparent to us. But the field has a unique way to draw out the reality of our need for the Spirit’s power.

The Missions Field is a Pioneering Environment.

Floyd McClung coined the term ‘apostolic passion,’ which he defines as “a deliberate, intentional choice to live for the worship of Jesus in the nations.” It’s drawn from Paul’s ‘ambition’ in Romans 15:

“And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written, “Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.”

– Romans 15:20-21

I think many, if not most, cross-cultural workers have this apostolic passion. We not only desire to see Jesus worshipped among the nations, but have what McClung calls the apostolic abandonment and focus to give our lives and time and efforts towards making disciples among the unreached.

Those with apostolic passion will go to start new work among people and places where Jesus is not yet known. These missions fields are what I would call pioneering environments, where the methods, systems, structures, institutions, and the sufficient number of disciple-makers needed to reach a people or place do not yet exist. As such, pursuing disciple-making and church planting in a pioneering environment requires different approaches than in reached areas, including increased innovation, more flexible methodology, a higher rate of experimentation and failing forward, and more agile teams that can adjust quickly to change.

But above everything, pioneering environments require spiritual breakthrough.

The Pioneering Environment Requires Spiritual Breakthrough, Including Spiritual Gifts.

And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.

– Mark 16:20

As much as I believe that strategic and innovative approaches can be helpful in starting movements, too often we see cross-cultural workers put their hope in their strategies and tools rather than in the Spirit’s power. These unreached communities have been resistant to the gospel for potentially hundreds of years, and there are too many cultural, religious, historical, and most of all spiritual barriers to the gospel in these pioneering environments for human ability to make a dent. Even the perfect persuasive evangelism tool has no power to change the heart of someone who lives in darkness. Seeing people among the unreached repent and believe the gospel requires the Spirit to move in power!

Paul tells us that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12), and that “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4). Throughout the New Testament, we see signs, wonders, gifts, and power coincide with the proclamation of the gospel in the mission field, whether through Jesus himself (Matthew 9:35), in the disciples (Luke 10:19), or through the early believers in Acts (Acts 14:3).

These spiritual realities of warfare that faced the early church should inform how we approach the pioneering environments that we are in! For every hour of planning, how many do we give to prayer? For every resource we develop, how much do we focus on receiving and using the Spirit’s power and gifts? Do our approaches even allow for “divine power to destroy strongholds,” or are they weapons of the flesh and human wisdom? These are questions that I need to ask myself often!

If we can see the battle is spiritual, just as Elisha’s servant had his eyes opened (2 Kings 6:17), the good news is that the “weapons of our warfare” are already promised and given. I love that in every one of the Great Commission passages, power is promised to accompany the commission to make disciples and preach the gospel. One significant aspect of this power is through the spiritual gifts that each believer is given.

We should expect, depend on, and regularly use the gifts of the Spirit in the work of pioneering movements.

Our Thai partners greatly outpace us in this category. Their primary method of entering new communities is by praying for needs. We train and practice praying for people with a simple prayer, and then see if God moves and opens their hearts to hear more about Jesus. Often, people request prayer for physical ailments and illnesses.

Early on in our partnership with Mint, we went with her to visit one new believer’s house that was 40 minutes down a dirt road. After going through a new believer lesson with the new believer Sarah, she introduced us to her mom. Sarah told us that her mom hadn’t been able to stand or walk for several months, and a doctor told them that she would likely never walk again because of severe osteoporosis. Together with Mint, we gathered to pray for Sarah’s mom. Nothing happened. We said our goodbyes and Mint told Sarah that she would come back next week to go through more discipleship lessons.

A week later, Mint and her team went back to Sarah’s house. And they prayed again for Sarah’s mom.

And Sarah’s mom stood up and walked down the stairs for the first time in months.

The next week, she walked into the nearby creek to be baptized by her daughter.

As more and more disciple-makers were trained to engage the harvest, reports of healings, miracles, and salvations began coming in weekly. 

• One new believer was beaten by her husband so severely that her right eye swelled and she was blinded in that eye. She came to the local house church and had the believers pray for her. The next day, she woke up, and the swollenness was gone and she could see! 
• In another province, a new believer discovered he had the gift of healing and met a sick woman while selling bus tickets. After praying for her, she invited him to her nearby village where he healed an entire group of elderly ladies and started a new group! 
• Another new believer was in the hospital and prayed for a person in the bed next to them that had stopped breathing and was declared dead – and they came back to life! 
• At one training, we heard one leader yelling “Go out! Go out!” into the phone which is the same word in Thai as the go in “go and make disciples” from Matthew 28, so we thought he was training. But one new believer was working on a rubber farm and a coworker put on an amulet and became possessed by an evil spirit. She didn’t know how to cast it out so she called this leader to cast it out over the phone!

Over the past 7 years of partnering with this network of church planters, we’ve heard dozens, if not hundreds, of answered prayer stories like these, and probably have missed hundreds more. We start almost every meeting or training with the question – is there anything you would like to praise God for? And stories begin flowing out. One of my favorites is where one new believer prayed for rain on their farm, and the storm poured out rain just on their land and stopped exactly at the border between their farm and their neighbor’s!

These types of supernatural breakthroughs are common and normative in movements, like those in the book of Acts. When normal, faithful disciples (and almost all of the above stories are from new believers) are released to operate in power, God shows up! Are we expectant of these things? Are we asking the Spirit for them?

Though All Gifts Are Useful, Certain Gifts Are Particularly Helpful in the Pioneering Environment.

Certain spiritual gifts are particularly useful in pioneering ministry work, and others are more useful for building up the body in the context of a local church or mission team.

To give some examples:

• Healing and Miracles – We see this as a standard aspect of bringing the Kingdom of God to the world. Accompanied with the proclamation of the gospel are signs and wonders like healing and miracles. The several stories from the previous section are examples of what it can look like!
  
• Evangelism – Obviously, evangelism gifts are valuable to pioneering environments! All believers should share the gospel regularly regardless of gifting, and, those gifted in evangelism should use it frequently! People with an evangelistic gift just seem to very easily connect with people, and can have more effectiveness in sharing the gospel and winning people to Christ.
  
  Before we launched as a team to Thailand, we tried to live out disciple-making rhythms in preparation for overseas work. Out of our team of 12, one teammate who was evangelism gifted had led more people to Christ than the rest of our team combined! We will talk more about Ephesians 4 later, but evangelism-gifted leaders shouldn’t only exercise their gift in sharing the gospel, but need to use their gift to equip others to share.

• Teaching / Training – At first glance, it’d seem that teaching would be a gift more appropriate for within the local church. But for teams trying to start movements with a ‘Be Barnabas’ approach, catalyzing near culture believers to share the gospel means there’s a lot of training! It means that those with a teaching gift who are able to handle the Word simply and equip near or in-culture believers to share the gospel, make disciples, and multiply churches is extremely valuable! Also, teaching gifts can be crucial in developing simple, reproducible, biblical curriculum that can be used in new multiplying works.

• Helps – Another gift that seems like it would be more suited to within the local church is helps. But a Be Barnabas approach means that the National Apostolic Visionary (NAV) leader is the “Paul” that God has chosen to pioneer new ministry among their people, and our role as outsider is to serve and support that leader. If we want to Be Barnabas, it requires a humbling of ourselves to serve that leader, and those with the gift of helps will be particularly suited to caring for, supporting, and providing whatever is needed for that NAV leader to thrive and multiply.
  
  One of our teammates gifted in helps walked alongside a local believer who was going through burnout. That believer wasn’t implementing movement practice or actively making disciples, so Jenn and I questioned if that was really the best use of that teammate’s time. But after helping this Thai friend take a sabbatical, this local believer came back and said – I want to devote my time to multiplying disciples! – and has recently started a number of new groups! As people not gifted in helps, we saw that time investment as questionable, but to our teammate, she was drawn to serve through her gifting. That’s why it’s critical that all the gifts have an opportunity to participate in the Great Commission! Side note – this is why we love the Be Barnabas approach! The apostolic and evangelist will clearly have value in supporting the NAV’s ministry, but so do the teachers, shepherds, and helpers in a very different and much needed way!

We Should Have the Ability to Identify and Develop Spiritual Gifts In Our National Partners.

Lastly, it’s critical that we have studied, practiced, and developed our own gifts and gifts in others so that we can identify and develop spiritual giftings in our national partners. When we’re looking for a “Paul”-type national partner who can catalyze movements, part of that is looking for a specific type of gifting. It’s in the name – a National Apostolic Visionary leader. We break down some of that in our article about what a NAV is. We’ll also have a future post further exploring the word “apostolic” including the apostolic gifting.

Although we have a certain eye out for apostolic leaders, we should also partner with local believers that have other giftings. Anyone who is ready to be obedient to the Great Commission to share the gospel and make disciples is worth investing in! At the end of the day, the goal is to multiply healthy churches, and that requires all of the gifts, though different gifts might be emphasized at different phases of ministry. For example, apostolic and evangelistic gifts might be most helpful in pioneering in a new area to win people to faith. But as churches grow, gifts like pastor/shepherding and teaching will need to be emphasized. As issues needing correction come up in the church, giftings like exhortation and prophecy will need to be elevated.

Do we know what the Word says about each of these giftings? Are we able to identify them in emerging leaders? Do we know how to develop these giftings and encourage local partners to use them to advance the work of multiplying churches?

In our next post, we’ll explore how different spiritual gifts can help edify the body, either in the local church context or on missions teams. Below are some questions for reflection about spiritual gifts and the missions field.

Reflection Questions

• Are you expectant for the power of the Holy Spirit to work in you and in your ministry? Why or why not?
• Have you seen the Holy Spirit’s power working actively in your ministry? In what situations, experiences, or people have you seen this most clearly?
• Are you, your teammates, and your national partners regularly using spiritual gifts in ministry? Why or why not? Where do you, your teammates, or national partners need greater development in this topic?
• How could God specifically use your spiritual gifts to move your ministry forward?

10 years on the field – in ministry leadership and through a pandemic, cancer, and role transitions – has felt like the equivalent of 20 years in comparison to what life was like back in the States before we launched. As many have said, life overseas consists of high-highs and low-lows. Those events and the ways we’ve been impacted by them have changed us significantly.

We had the privilege to take our first sabbatical this past year to reflect on the past 10 years and look forward to the next season. I ended up timelining personal, team, and ministry events over the past 10 years and drawing key themes and lessons from each year and each term.

In the last 10 years, we have…

Personal

• Moved to 8 different apartments
• Taken over 400 flights, traveling for 50%+ of the year for 4 of the 10 years
• Fought each other every day for our first year in Thailand
• Missed 20 weddings our first year in Thailand, including 3 weddings of our teammates
• Missed the births of nephews and nieces, and the funerals of grandparents
• Lived through a pandemic lockdown overseas (with Animal Crossing)
• Were repatriated for a medical emergency
• Endured 18 months of cancer treatment including surgery, radiation, and chemo
• Burned out and were ready to quit ministry
• Fostered 2 sassy bunnies
• Served for 6 years on our organization’s executive leadership team
• Transitioned out of our original sending organization to start our own new ministry
• Took 6 years to finish a 2 year seminary degree

Team

• Onboarded or helped our team leaders onboard 22 teammates (and counting!)
• Seen 8 teammates leave the field
• Expanded our original team to 3 new teams

Ministry

• Seen our teams train over 1000 Thai believers in disciple-making and church-planting
• Helped train and oversee 30+ Thai church planting teams throughout Thailand
• Seen God begin to multiply our Thai partners’ ministry in disciples and churches, including 1000+ professions of faith
• Developed, with teammates and Thai partners, a training handbook for planting multiplying churches in Thai

The category of items that were uncountable:

• Hours sitting in traffic
• Roaches and vermin killed or chased away (or that we ran away from)
• Hours waiting at immigration
• Intolerably spicy Thai meals, and related trips to the bathroom
• Misspelled and mispronounced Thai words
• Exhaustion naps
• Video calls around the world
• Team meetings, corporate prayer times, and worship sessions
• Times crying out to God in weakness and desperation
• Discernment, peace, blessing, and power given by the Holy Spirit in response
• Difficult conversations
• Hours spent walking with teammates through major health, sin, and life issues
• Minor and major health issues endured by us, our team, and our partners
• Stories of answered prayer, healings, deliverance, and salvation
• People around the world, especially and including teammates and Thai friends, who prayed for us, encouraged us, and supported us

I’ve looked over this list a few times, and even in bullet form, it is difficult not to feel the flood of emotions, the weightiness, the intensity of what this list represents. It has been a story of our weakness, self-dependence, and shortcomings coming to the surface in the midst of difficulties, challenges, and conflict, and the Lord meeting us in faithfulness, intimacy, and power. The last 10 years have been so much fuller, more joyful, and more rewarding than I could’ve ever thought possible. And it has been so much more difficult, painful, and crushing than I could’ve imagined before we launched.

For the sake of posterity, I’ll write down a favorite ministry memory and a favorite team memory. In another post, I’ll share a few of the lessons and themes that came out of my sabbatical reflection.

I thought about writing out some of the most difficult memories, including the day of Jenn’s seizure or finding out about a teammate’s moral failure, but it is heavy enough looking at that list above without going deep into the really tough stuff. And I’ll also save the numerous funny and outrageous ‘life in Thailand’ memories for another time, including the pregnant rat mother or the cheez-it dust story.

Favorite Ministry Memory

There’s probably two dozen that could go in this spot, including:

• Our very first training in Mint’s province where their family made Khao Laam for us afterwards, one of my favorite Thai foods – a coconut milk and sticky rice with red beans dessert stuffed into a piece of bamboo and roasted over an open fire. Or whenever Mint’s mom made us dinner!
• The first house church training we did with Mint’s new believers when we asked, what can we use for communion, and an old grandpa in the back said, ‘I brought ginger juice and sticky rice for my snack – can we use this?’ It felt like a 5 loaves and 2 fishes moment for our very first communion with a new house church that had come out of our ministry.
• One of the first house church gatherings we went to, when we sat in a circle with a room of mostly brand new believers and cried out in worship, “God heal our land that your name would endure forever!”

But the very favored one that comes to mind is at the end of 2020. After Covid lockdowns for 3 months, Thailand mostly reopened and our partners continued to push forward and see new believers and churches nearly every week. After 2 years of a crazy whiplash of travel and trainings and an explosion of new fruit, our partners coordinated a big celebration camp for all the church planters in the network, over 100 people from 30 teams in 20+ provinces in Thailand. We were big enough as a network to get shirts made! They chose สุดปลายแผนดิน to put on the shirt – “to the ends of the earth” from Acts 1:8.

After hearing countless stories of answered prayers, miraculous healing, deliverance, new believers, new churches, changed lives, sacrifice and suffering, trials and obstacles, and faithful obedience, our team prepared an activity to help each team receive vision from the Lord about where He was leading them to pioneer new churches. We grouped each of the 30 teams in 5 regions: North, Northeast, East, Central, And North-Central. We asked each team to listen to the Lord about 3 places they felt He was leading them to focus on in the next year. We told them that after 10 minutes of prayer and listening, to put a sticker dot on their province map on the wall of where they felt led to pioneer.

As these faithful church planters began putting stickers on maps, they looked like bright points of light against the background of the maps. Spiritual points of light in a land covered in darkness.

It was at that moment that I thought, “This work will continue through these people with or without us.” This was a prayer we had been asking for before we even launched, before we had even met these friends, before many of these people had ever started following Jesus.

And through this group, there was a legitimate chance that the promise of Habakkuk 2:14 could be fulfilled in Thailand – “that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

Overwhelmed and with tears flowing down my face, I had to go to a corner to sit down. After wiping my eyes, I looked over and saw my teammates similarly teary-eyed. And next to them were some of the regional leaders, those that we had trained the earliest like Mint and Talia, also crying. It was God showing all of us that the vision He had promised was beginning to be fulfilled.

Less than 6 months later, Jenn and I would be on a plane being repatriated back to the States for cancer treatment. We wouldn’t return for over 18 months, and the church planting network would encounter its most intense season of opposition, with Covid restrictions shutting down the country, Talia also being diagnosed with cancer, our network leadership team falling apart, and teammates coming off the field.

While we were gone, we weren’t sure how the ministry would go and had to release it to the Lord. Much of the work contracted during that time, but the thought I had during that 2020 celebration camp remained true – the work continued on even without us there. The past 2 years since coming back, we have had a season of ‘starting anew’ to help the network restart their momentum.

But just a week from now, we’ll have our first celebration camp with the whole network of church planters since 2020. Many of the people are different, and the people who remain like us, Mint, and Talia have been significantly changed.

Through trial and suffering and loss, the Lord has brought new life and new leaders and new believers and new churches in new areas that have never had the gospel. We continue to believe that this promise of Joshua 1 will be true for our Thai partners: “every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you,” until the gospel has gone to every people and place in Thailand.

Favorite Team Memory

There’s also way too many to count here, but I’ll bullet point a few favorites:

• Our pre-field team retreat where we tried to go through a desert survival scenario to figure out team dynamics and communication but we ended up all dying of thirst. Whoops.
• Our first team fellowship ever, where I told everyone to buy something on the street that looked interesting so we could potluck – 5 out of 7 people brought roast chicken because everything else looked weird!
• Late night McDonald’s as second dinner while watching Friends after 6 hours of meetings with our leadership team. This was a regular occurrence but some of my favorite times together with our leaders.
• Our sub-team getting together for a meeting during a heavy travel and training season where we all decided to put our heads down on the table for a power nap before starting our meeting because we’re all beyond exhausted.
• Thanksgivings and Christmases, including the Thanksgiving where I was super confused about why the turkey was so cold inside and burnt outside only to cut it open and find some mutant turkey breast that had a 3 inch layer of fat that wasn’t cooking – blegh.
• A family gathering in the States where we brought together all the parents on our original team to spend time together, celebrate, and honor our parents for their sacrifice and support in sending their children.
• A prayer activity with interactive stations at our team retreat in 2017 that Jenn and I frantically created 2 hours beforehand, but the Lord met us with intimacy and power. The last station was from Revelation 5:8, which references the “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints” before the angels and elders proclaim Jesus’ worthiness among the nations. We had teammates write down prayers towards that final vision and put them in the bowls as an offering to the Lord.

The most impactful team memory however, is our last team celebration in 2019 as an original team before expanding into three teams in 2020. We deeply love and appreciate every teammate that has ever come through our teams in Thailand, but there was something special about our original team of 13. We were all so fresh faced, naive, earnest, and so-so-so not ready for what was about to happen. But we were together and we had each other in the midst of all that confusion and newness.

We had the vision to expand into multiple teams even before we launched, because of the uniqueness of the different contexts within Thailand (Buddhist/Muslim/Tribal) and because the Lord had blessed our team with multiple leaders. After 2 years of prayer, planning, and preparing the new team leaders, we had a final celebration as a team before we officially expanded.

We split into guys/gals time and the guys got to watch Muay Thai together. And we reflected on good and difficult times as a team. We worshipped and prayed together. And we celebrated all that God had done in and through us. Jenn and I prepared small gifts for each teammate as well.

We led a reflection exercise where we asked each teammate to think of 3 words that described them and described the team at the beginning and 3 words for themselves and the team now. Blue text is for personal words and black text is for team words.

Perhaps even more than the ministry fruit we got to celebrate together, this list of transformed lives and a transformed community is maybe one of my most cherished things from our time in Thailand.

From selfish, proud, naive, insecure, broken, superficial strangers to joyful, rooted in Christ, safe, abiding, thriving, tested, humbled, fruitful, impactful family. It’s such an unbelievable thing that God did in a short few years to knit us together.

At the end of the time, while crying the hardest I ever have in front of other people, I commissioned our teammates out to their new teams and fields of ministry in Thailand, and commended them to God as Paul does with the elders in Acts 20.

That time together marked a significant transition for us, as soon after we would be in different places, with different teammates added to the new teams, and Covid happening simultaneously with our team expansion. But wherever God will take us – to different cities, different organizations, or different countries – no matter what, that team will forever be family for us. And when those golden bowls of the prayers of the saints – including our prayers from that team retreat – get poured out at Jesus’ return, I’m sure that this family, clothed in white robes and together with those from Thailand we had the opportunity to impact, will save each other seats around the throne. Maybe afterwards we’ll have some McDonald’s.

“Strategy” is a frequently used word in missions leadership, maybe because of the parallels between missions and military situations. It’s often expected that team leaders would be ‘strategic’ in their ministry plans and leadership of their teams. For some leaders, they hear the word ‘strategy plan’ and they get really excited. Others might hear it and think, ‘that’s overwhelming, I’ll never be able to create a strategy and I don’t even know where to start.’ 

This is a two-part guide for how to write a Strategy Plan for your ministry. In this first part, I want to just define a few things about strategy and some of the information that needs to be gathered before you write a strategy plan. In the second part, we’ll have a step-by-step guide for how to write a Strategy Plan.

This guide is intended primarily for field team leaders pursuing movements among the unreached, but I think it can be adapted for many different ministry contexts. This was developed when we expanded from one team that Jenn and I led into 3 teams in early 2020, and we needed to help our new team leaders create their own strategy plans. I had to switch from thinking about strategy more intuitively and instead think of how any team leader, regardless of their natural aptitudes, could create a basic strategy plan for their ministry and their team.

Vision vs. Strategy vs. Tactics

The dictionary definition of strategy is – a plan of action designed to accomplish an overall goal within certain conditions. It’s important to distinguish vision (the end goal) from strategy (the plan) and tactics (the actions you do to fulfill the plan). Your vision (e.g. multiplying movements among this unreached people group) should be heavily prayed over and considered even before you launch to the field – it should very rarely change unless something very drastic happens or God speaks in a very clear way. You should be confident, clear, and committed enough to the vision God has given to you to be willing to give your life for it.

Strategy is the plan that you use to get from where you are to the vision that God has given you; it should be revisited and reworked probably 1-3 times a year to get a big picture view of how it’s going and how to plan to move forward. Tactics are the day-to-day and week-to-week actions that you do to accomplish your strategic objectives, and can change just as frequently.

What Strategy Is and Isn’t

Before we jump into the step-by-step guide, I wanted to bring some clarity to what I think strategy is and is not. Strategic thinking can quickly go from helpful tool to unhelpful pitfall if we’re not careful.

• Strategy is not primary. Even though I personally love strategy and my mind is drawn to it, I think we can assign far too much value to strategic thinking and strategy plans, particularly for Westerners. Give me a leader with godly character who is able to listen to the Holy Spirit and is humble to learn, over a strategic thinker without those things, every time. The best man-made strategies cannot compare to a godly leader obedient to the Spirit.
• Strategy is not meant to be perfect. The goal should never be to have a perfect plan. Ministry is messy because ministry involves people, including you and me! Therefore, we should hold our plans relatively loosely, and not get upset when our strategies don’t end up working out. But going through the process of thinking and planning can help you to understand what’s going well and what isn’t working, as well as other important aspects (more below). From experience, our plans have never really worked out how I originally thought it would, but we’ve seen God more often than not fulfill the goals and objectives that He was giving us. It feels like He is simultaneously reminding us that He is in charge, and showing His faithfulness to do what He leads us towards!
• Strategy is not as simple as copying someone else’s. You cannot carbon copy someone else’s strategy. This is a pitfall for a lot of people working towards CPM: they think, ‘well this strategy or training worked there, so it’s going to work here!’ The place you’re going to is unreached because of the difficult barriers to the gospel and to multiplication. Each context is unique because people groups and cultures are complex, so having a cookie-cutter approach between different contexts rarely works. It’s fine to mimic some of the things you learn from other places – most of the tools and lessons we use in Thailand are totally ripped off from other places in the world.

Strategy is not primary, won’t be perfect, and shouldn’t be copied, but it’s still a powerful tool when we have the right perspective:

• Strategy is important. Even though strategy plans won’t be perfect, it’s still an important endeavor and a helpful tool in your ministry. It’s the pathway for how you want to get to the vision God has given you, and it helps to create good expectations for your team. One of the questions we got the most from our teammates was, “Are we doing the right thing?” Crafting a strategy plan helps you and your team to move forward with focus, to thoughtfully learn from and adjust to your mistakes, and gives you clarity in what you’re asking God for in faith-filled prayer. 
• Strategy is doable. You don’t need to be an amazing ‘strategist’ in order to create a basic strategy plan. It shouldn’t be overly complicated or it will cease to be helpful. If you’re willing to learn, to listen to the Holy Spirit, and to put in some of the time and effort to write things down, a strategy plan will be a helpful tool for you and your team.
• Strategy requires continued learning and adapting. Whether a new team leader or an experienced one, you will never have all the information you need to create a perfect plan. There will always be mistakes, missteps, and places where you’re downright wrong, and a good leader will learn from failing forward. God’s ways are not our ways (Isa. 55:8-9), and that’s good! If you’ve learned from the actions you’ve taken, then you’re well on your way to figuring out what will work. And, there are others that have gone before that can help you – learn from them!

Information Gathering

Before we jump into the steps for writing a strategy plan, there’s two areas that require some learning and information gathering: principles and context.

Learn the Principles

Ministry principles are the building blocks for your ministry plan. A principle is something that is true regardless of context. Our ministry philosophy and strategic plan uses CPM principles.

As much as possible, we try to adhere to these principles and keep these in mind when we’re forming our strategy plan and tactics. When making ministry decisions, we’ll ask – is this simple and reproducible? Is this in line with Scripture? Are we sowing broadly?

For movement practitioners, it’s essential to know these principles and study the different ways these principles can be applied in different contexts. The more you can learn from others that are doing or have seen success in a similar ministry as you, the more you’ll build your database of knowledge and be able to form strategy appropriately.

Principles are different from applications – this is an important distinction in strategy. For example, broad sowing is an important principle for multiplication, but the application of broad sowing can look different in different contexts.

For us, 3 Circles is a gospel sharing tool that we learned and used in the US. In our first training group with Thai disciple-makers, we trained them in how to use 3 Circles. After 3+ months of going onto the college campus as a team and sharing 3 Circles over 200 times with almost no success, we asked our Thai partners, ‘is this a good tool for sharing in Thailand?’ They told us, ‘No, it isn’t!’ There were too many differences in worldview for 3 Circles to make sense to someone from a Buddhist background, so we needed to pick an application that was more contextually appropriate.

It can also be helpful to learn from and use different ministry models to guide your strategic planning. We use this Multiplication Cycle adapted from other models with our partners in Thailand, but there are many other models out there like 4 Fields or the T4T Three Thirds Process. There’s a ton of resources out there, and you can find some of them on our Resources page.

Investigate your Context

Now that you’ve studied and understood the ministry principles and models that you want to use – here comes the hard part! How do I apply this in my context? What are the best methods, practices, and rhythms of training, coaching, evangelism, discipleship, and church planting among your people group?

Before you launch, and as you’re there, learn as much as you can about your context and people. In the 2 years before we launched to Thailand, I had Joshua Project opened on my computer and Operation World on my desk, and I prayed through a different UPG a day in Thailand before we ever moved there. Learn about the culture, the gospel barriers, the history of Christianity in that country if there’s anything. Try to identify where the major barriers and opportunities are. Meet people from that country and ask a ton of questions about their upbringing and culture and context (ethnographic interviews can be a helpful tool to ask good questions). Try to meet other like-minded goers that have been there for a while, even better if they’re movement focused as well.

It’s difficult to create a strategy plan with the right applications when you haven’t learned the principles and the context. Again, you won’t have perfect knowledge, so ministry strategy requires experimentation and innovation. Ultimately, none of us as outsiders will have the cultural understanding that an insider will be, so partnering with national believers can be one of the most effective approaches in cross-cultural ministry – we call this ‘Being Barnabas’ and will write a future post about it!

Write your Strategy Plan!

From there, you can start to write up a strategy plan (part 2!). It’s a good practice to write a strategy plan before you even launch, but just hold that loosely because there’s so much you learn just by being on the ground there. When you get there, you want to learn as much as possible and write down what you learn. We had our team brainstorm 50 questions in 10 different categories that they’d try to ask different types of people over the first 2 years – some of the categories were about religion, culture, Church history, barriers to the gospel, spiritual environment, urban vs. rural, etc. 

It’s a good idea to revisit the strategy plan after you finish language school and before you start to jump into full-time ministry engagement, maybe 1-2 years after you’ve been there, depending on how long language learning is for you. Then probably evaluate your strategy plan once again after your first season of ministry as you’ve tried some stuff out.

Strategy is a tool that can help bring clarity, but it doesn’t determine your success. No one ever got to movement because of perfect man-made strategy; God alone determines when and if movements start. And the Holy Spirit is the driver and the guide – if you look at Paul’s journeys in Acts, you can clearly see some strategic aspects of how Paul operates – like going to synagogues before engaging Gentiles (Acts 17:2), or the way he sets up local leaders versus leaders in his apostolic team (Acts 19:22). But you should also go and count how many times his ‘plans’ get changed by the guiding and direction of the Holy Spirit (Acts 16:6), like getting the dream of the Macedonian call (Acts 16:9).

In Part 2, we’ll give you a step-by-step guide for how to write a strategy plan, but ultimately, our plans need to be given to us by the Spirit – and he will do it!